After we checked out this morning, we went & found the Mrs Doubtfire house. It is in an area full of big beautiful houses. It is a lovely looking house but like the Painted Ladies, could do with a coat of paint.
Then we headed for Monterey. After a bit on the freeway getting us out of town, Marcia (the GPS voice) told us to take an exit. Sometimes if you get over too early you get forced to exit so I wasn't all the way over. Then there was an A & B exit, lots of signs with different freeway numbers & I missed it. It was to put us on a freeway heading west. Usually Marcia just gives us another direction but this time she didn't and we continued south on the freeway. I suspect we missed driving the coast road for that section & therefore lots of lovely coastline scenery but I don't really want to know.
Monterey is only a 2hr drive from San Francisco so we decided to visit Carmel by Sea first. It is only 10mins away from Monterey. Carmel reminded me a bit of Leura as it had a Main Street with lots of galleries, boutiques, funky shops & cafes/restaurants along both sides & a garden in the middle of the road dividing traffic. But the big difference is that there was a beach at the bottom of the road. There was a boardwalk with a lookout where we could see lots of the coastline. It was a sunny day & looked very inviting.
Just near the beach was the turn off for the 17 Mile Drive. This extends from Pacific Grove to Pebble Beach and is considered one of the most scenic drives in the world. There is a very exclusive golf course here which costs $500 to play a single game of golf. It is a toll road so we had to pay $9.75 for the privilege of driving it. It was a nice drive & we were given a map to show us the points of interest. Personally I didn't think it was as impressive as the Oregon coast. The area is full of cypress trees which have very gnarly trunks & almost flat canopies. We stopped at the Lone Tree which is a single tree growing on a rocky outcrop.
At one point there was a huge rock poking up out of the sea which was covered in sea lions. They were making the same honking noise as the ones at Pier 39. Further along we came across some harbour seals. They were sitting quietly on the rocks or just bobbing about in the water, no honking from them! Further out to sea from where we saw the seals we saw 2 water spouts. There were a couple of whales out there. At the lone tree stop we saw them again & watched for quite a while. We saw at least 3 spouts & sometimes the back of a whale but they never breached as we were hoping. Monterey is a big whale watching area. They do year round tours & regularly see orcas, gray & humpback whales. This area is also well known for sea otters. We didn't see any today but will head down to the water in the morning to look for some.
Because the sun sets so early, it was starting to set by the time we left Carmel. We haven't seen very much of Monterey at all. Tonight we went down to the area known as Cannery Row. This is now one of the Pacific Coasts main tourist attractions full of shops & seafood restaurants but it used to be where the sardine canning factories were. The canneries failed after the collapse of the Monterey fishing industry in the mid 1950s. The last cannery closed in 1973.
We chose a restaurant for dinner & had just started to eat when Santa came in. I have no idea if he was doing the rounds or if he was hired by the restaurant. But, he really looked like Santa & stopped by all the tables for photos. As least Santa knows where we are!